The two made their way up the fin, then to the top of the pod.
Standing roped together, and secured by their magsoles, they cautiously worked their way forward until they had reached the top edge of the wide forward window.
Boba knelt, Garr beside him. They crept over the edge of the window and looked down. Boba felt totally exposed. If any of the crew looked up, they would see two helmeted heads looking in from s.p.a.ce!
Every alarm in the ship would go off.
But no one was looking up. The bridge was quiet. Crew members sat at their control consoles, while officers circulated among them, checking the system coordinates.
"Awesome!" said Garr. "This is the main command center. Everything happens here first."
The captain and the first officers, in their brightly colored uniforms, were consulting with a robed Jedi at a holomap table. Boba recognized Glynn-Beti, the Bothan Jedi who had questioned him.
I"m lucky she got distracted, he thought. If she had made me open that flight bag, I would probably be a prisoner right now.
"I wonder what they are talking about," Garr said. "Maybe they got word about some of the parents. I would like to see my parents again."
Boba didn"t say anything. It was an awkward moment.
"Someday you will meet my parents," said Garr. "You will like them."
"Maybe," Boba said. I doubt it, he thought.
Boba was ready to go, but he was waiting for Garr - who liked watching people as much as Boba liked watching stars.
Garr lay facedown, looking through the window at the crew on the bridge.
Boba lay on his back, staring up. He loved the dizzy feeling he got, looking deep into a sea of stars and galaxies.
They had been on top of the bridge tower module for almost twenty minutes. Boba checked his air tank and it was still over half full. But his heater was running down. He could feel the chill of s.p.a.ce seeping into his suit, especially at his feet and hands.
"We should be heading back," he said to Garr. "Couple of more minutes, " said Garr. "They"re looking at another holomap."
"A map? Let"s see." Boba rolled over and looked down.
"That"s a weird map!" said Garr. "I can"t tell anything about it."
"Uh-oh," said Boba.
"What?"
"We"d better get back into the airlock, fast!" "What"s wrong?"
Garr"s voice was sharp with fear.
Just then a siren wailed. The two could feel it reverberating through the hull.
"That"s the ten-minute alarm!" Boba said. "That was a hypers.p.a.ce map they were looking at. The ship is about to jump!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
Faster!
Down, down - Faster!
Around, around Boba was no longer feeling the cold, even though the little; heater in his suit was almost drained.
Garr was gulping air, spinning through the vacuum, grabbing at one handhold and then another.
Neither spoke. There was no time for words. They hurried toward the back of the ship where the big ion jets were staining the universe a pale blue.
How much time do we have left? Boba wondered. Six minutes? Five?
"What happens if.?" Garr asked as they made their way down the fin from the bridge tower module.
"If what?"
"You know what! If we don"t get inside the ship before the jump into! hypers.p.a.ce!?"
"At best, we will see a flash of light, and be fried to a crisp in the plasma flare of the hyper-s.p.a.ce warp."
"That"s best? What"s worst?"
"At worst we won"t feel a thing or even see a flash of light. We will just look around and see no ship. It will be gone. And we will drift here all alone, endlessly, until we die."
The alert siren still wailed but they heard it only when they touched the hull, through their hands or the soles of their boots.
At the steepest part of the wing, Garr missed a step, and spun off into s.p.a.ce. Boba grabbed a seam and held on for dear life. The safety line snapped tight - yanking Garr back into Boba.
000MMPPHHHFF!.
"Careful," Boba said. He wanted to say "slow down" but he knew he couldn"t. If they slowed down, they were lost.
"You idiot!" said Boba as he untangled the line and started down, over the rear of the wing.
"I"m sorry!" Garr said. "I missed a hold."
"I was talking to myself!" Boba said. "This whole thing is my fault. It was a stupid idea!"
I lost track of what was most important. A bounty hunter never does that.
Through the window Boba could see crew members running, security droids clearing the halls, and clone troopers scurrying in formation.
How much time left? Three minutes? Two?
The airlock was still at least five minutes away...
"This way!" Boba said. It looked like a shortcut.
He plunged down into a dark "canyon" - a slot between the rear boosters and the ventral hull fin - making his way hand over hand.
It was dark, and the handholds were far apart. Garr belayed Boba, and then Boba belayed Garr, so that one of them was always secured to the hull of the ship.
Boba grinned when he emerged at the other end of the slot. His gamble had paid off. There was the lighted airlock door, still open, waiting for them - only a hundred meters away!
Two hundred meters if they went around on the hull. One hundred if they took a chance and floated straight across.
"Let"s try it," Boba said. "This last jump can be made in one leap if we both let go."
"But what if we miss?"
"Then we"re dead. But we may be dead anyway if we don"t try it.
We"re running out of time."
Boba looked at his friend. He wondered if he looked as frightened to Garr as Garr did to him. Probably!
"Well, then," said Garr, giving a brave thumbs-up, "what are we waiting for? Let"s try it!"
The airlock door a hundred meters away looked tiny.
Boba gathered the rope into a coil, took Garr"s hand, and said, "On three. One... two..."
He didn"t remember saying "three" but he realized he must have said it, for they were floating free in s.p.a.ce, unbelayed drifting slowly, hand in hand, toward the lighted square of the airlock door.
Both were silent. Boba was hardly even breathing. It was as if a word, a breath, might make them miss their target, and spin them off into s.p.a.ce.
Thirty meters, twenty, ten As they got closer, Boba saw that the target was even bigger than he had thought. The airlock door had handholds on either side, so he didn"t have to hit it dead center.
And at the end of the hull, just past the door, there was an antenna.
At the last minute a slight spin turned Boba and he saw that he was, in fact, going to miss the airlock door.
No sweat. "Your move, Garr. Just grab at those handholds as we go by."
"Got it!" said Garr. "Well, almost..." Another spin had pulled Garr back, just short of the handholds. Now they were floating on toward the end of the hull.
Luckily the antenna was right in reach. Boba let go of Garr"s hand and uncoiled the rope. He reached out and grabbed the antenna as he floated past.
"Got it!" he said aloud, to himself and Garr. Just as it broke off in his hand.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
"O000ph!"
The safety line went tight, jerking Boba and Garr together, then setting them spinning, like a kid"s toy - a giant kid"s toy that had been thrown away, down the deepest darkest hole in all the universe.
The deep dark hole that is the universe.
For they were spinning away from the ship, attached to each other but to nothing else doomed to float on forever while the Candaserri disappeared into hypers.p.a.ce.
They both were moving, falling, tumbling, head over heels away from the ship, toward the emptiness of s.p.a.ce.
Deep into the Big Isn"t.
Realizing the worst made Boba feel calmer. His panic was gone. His fear was gone. He remembered something his father had said: The worse things are, the calmer you need to be.
He felt as if he were standing still and watching the universe spin around him. There was the Candaserri; then there was Garr, at the other end of the safety line; then just stars until the ship came up again.
Each time the ship was slightly smaller. How long before it"s gone altogether? Boba wondered. The hypers.p.a.ce jump was due at any moment.
"Teff, you still there?"
"Yeah."
"It"s been great, being your friend."
"Same here," said Boba. He almost wished he had told his friend his real name. Maybe it wasn"t too late.
He caught sight of Garr, wheeling through his field of view.
Then the stars again, white except for one tiny orange one.
Then the ship, still there.
Orange star? Where had that come from?
Boba watched as the orange star came up again. It was exactly opposite the ship in his spin. If he had a jetpack, he could use the orange star for a fix: Aiming at it would stop his spin and guide him toward the ship.
No jetpack, though. And only a few minutes of air. When it was gone And that was when he got the idea.
"Teff? You still there?"
"Yeah."
"What"re you doing? I hear a clicking noise." "I"ve got an idea,"